Analysis Of The Vehicle Suspension System And Research On The Performance Of Key Parts

Auto products development has changed from the traditional serial process of design,manufacture, test, improvement, which is not adapted to the fast-changing market conditions,to a more organized concurrent process where design, manufacture, test, and improvement areconsidered at a very early stage. Virtual prototype technology that takes the CAE as a core iswidely used in the design development of auto products with the rapid development ofcomputer technology in recent years. Studies indicate that using virtual prototype technologywith a core of CAE can greatly shorten the product development cycle, reduce productdevelopment costs, and enhance economic efficiency of enterprises.Suspension system is one of the most vital assemblies of vehicle and its performancehave great influence on the vehicle’s raid comfort and handing stability. The kinematicsanalyses of suspension plays an important role in studying suspension system performanceeffect on the vehicle. The spatial structure of suspension and the motion relationship amongthe parts is very complicated, so traditional graphic technique is not meeting the issue ofprecision. But this problem can be solved by using the multi-bodied dynamics method. TheMcPherson front independent suspension of a new commercial vehicle was studied and itsmulti-body dynamics model was built by using Adams/Car. The kinematics simulationanalysis of the suspension was conducted in the case of parallel wheel travel. The simulationresults show that the design parameters of McPherson suspension are reasonable.The steering knuckle, key part to vehicle system, will produce fatigue crack or completecrack due to the repeated impact of multi-axial loading, which is the important reason to checkthe structural strength and predict the fatigue life of steering knuckle. It is unable to conductbench tests because of the lack of real loads of steering Knuckle in the early stage of thedevelopment of a new car. So it is important to solve this problem by using Computer AidedEngineering technology. The static and dynamic analysis of the multi-body dynamics model ofMcPherson suspension above was conducted. At the same time, the static and dynamic loadswere extracted. Nastran was used to check the structural strength by using of inertia reliefanalysis method and FEMFAT was used to predict the multi-axial fatigue life of steeringknuckle when three typical dangerous work conditions including run through rough road, minimal turning radius, emergency braking were considered. Moreover, the car in the C-levelroad excitation of the vibration fatigue life of steering knuckle was also solved out. The resultof finite element analysis indicates that the structural strength and fatigue strength weresatisfied.